Chris Pratt says he was “surprised” by the social media snark behind his Mario voice. “My hope is that people will come into the movie with an open mind and that once they see the film, any criticism around Mario’s accent will disappear.”
, CEO of Illumination. Both served as producers of the animated feature from Universal and Nintendo.
It’s not that Miyamoto is difficult — quite the opposite. Once he and Meledandri sit down for a more formal conversation, Miyamoto gamely gets into the nitty-gritty. Dressed in a red Mario T-shirt underneath a black blazer, the slim 70-year-old is nearly as animated as his characters.
“If I’d have had a relationship with Miyamoto and brought him onboard, if he had been a producer and he understood what we were doing, he wouldn’t have let certain things happen,” Morton says. “We would have been a team, and it would have been a different film.” “Movies are a different medium,” says Donna Langley, chairman of Universal Pictures. “It can’t just be about super-serving core fans. These adaptations must tell a good story that resonates with general audiences.”
“The impact of Mario in my life was watching my son’s joy,” Meledandri says. “When you see your child light up, you are immediately pulled toward whatever it is that’s lighting them up.” Don’t let Meledandri, outfitted in jeans and a navy blue quarter-zip, fool you. Even though he’s not one to play up his competitive nature, friends say Meledandri works around the clock, coordinating between Illumination’s main hubs in Los Angeles and Paris. And what he’s accomplished defies the prevailing odds.
When Mario first enters the Mushroom Kingdom in the movie, he gapes at its alien creatures and floating islands, marveling, “What is this place?” In fact, his introduction to this magical land is probably reminiscent of yours, when you first hit “Start” on a Super Mario game. Perhaps the most important aspect of Movie Mario is his voice, which lit the internet on fire when audiences unfavorably compared Pratt’s toned-down take in the first trailer with the over-the-top Italian intonation they know and love.in a lengthy email. “As the directors and I developed the character, we came to land on a voice that is different than Charles Martinet’s version of Mario, but also different from my own voice.
Now, Pratt leads a Mario mission fit for the big screen, with a voice cast including Anya Taylor-Joy as Peach, Jack Black as Bowser, Charlie Day as Luigi and Seth Rogen as Donkey Kong. When casting, Meledandri’s team pulled audio clips from a range of actors and listened to their voices while staring at character drawings. Once Illumination narrowed each role down to four to five voice actors, they presented options to Miyamoto.
“In video games, character serves the gameplay,” Meledandri says. “In movies, character is everything. Our story is in service of character.” The version of Mario in “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” is more fleshed out. Here, he’s a blue-collar New Yorker living at home with the fearful Luigi and their sprawling Italian American family. After the brothers launch a plumbing business, they set out to save Brooklyn from a flood and get sucked into a fantastical universe filled with armies of Toads, Koopas and kart-crafting Kongs.
“He’d done this drawing over our drawing and explained how we hadn’t gotten Bowser’s muzzle area exactly right — that it’s actually based on a tiger, with the nose and upper lip shapes,” Horvath recalls. “It was kind of a revelatory moment.” Illumination was tasked with making sure these concepts were believable within the logic of a movie. It’s a goal that, for the directors, extended as far as justifying why there are floating blocks in the Mushroom Kingdom, despite their explanation never making it into the film.
Mario wasn’t the only character who needed fleshing out. In the movie, Black plays a heavy metal-inspired Bowser whose relationship with Peach isn’t quite captor and captive. And while he “needed to be evil enough that the stakes are high for the characters,” according to Miyamoto, “Bowser has evolved into a unique, lovable villain. You do find cuteness in him.” For Black, the challenge was playing both those notes.
As he enters his eighth decade, Miyamoto has spent much of his life designing new challenges for his flagship character and, in turn, himself. But as the Nintendo legend embarks on his next level, he shows no signs of slowing down. Hollywood is far from Miyamoto’s final boss.